Skateboard slaat aan in Vlissingen – Skateboarding is catching on in Vlissingen, according to the December 4th, 1980 edition of the Dutch newspaper Provinciale Zeeuwse Courant. Check out the photo of that skatepark. Even though it’s low res black and white newspaper photo, it’s clearly one of those fiberglass ramps that was part of the Skate Ball system, and possibly the same blue fiberglass ramps used in Thrasherland. It’s hard to know for sure, could there have been more than one manufacturer of blue fiberglass skateboard ramps? There are similarities and differences between the two if you compare, but it’s conceivable that there were a few minor iterations over the product lifespan that would account for that. This is the only photograph I’ve seen showing the incline, full pipe parts (only half here) and the Skate Ball ramp. I’m just shocked that some of them made it all the way over to Europe.

The article comes courtesy of S&A reader Jeroen who rode this thing in the Netherlands. His crew actually found abandoned parts of the park and reassembled them in their own configuration and rode them in 1985.

Fantasma Toys radio controlled Sonic the Hedgehog Free Riders toy, skateboard edition. Reviewed by a little kid after the jump.

You’re looking at a computer game called Skateboard Kidz for the Spectrum (Sinclair) computer. The game was released in 1988 according to World of Spectrum, which would explain why it came on a cassette tape. Yes, that’s right, you used to have to load computer programs on some home computers via a cassette tape deck. Skateboard Kidz was made by Silverbird Software in the UK, and as such, all the radical 80’s dialect has a distinctly English accent. You can hear it yourself because the program files are downloadable from several places on the web, and if you don’t have a 25 year old computer, you can run it in a web browser with a Javascript MESS emulator. (FYI – Emulator does not seem to work with Safari.)

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This concept from Förster Skateboards should look familiar. I think this is the fifth iteration of a natural wood skateboard shown on Skate and Annoy over the years. (1,2, 3, 4)

– Thanks to Matthijs for the tip.

A Toys R Us gift card. It should come with a warning along the lines of “Don’t use this gift card to buy any of the so-called skateboards we sell here.”

From the revered line of Disney Lapel pins… I’m not sure what the date is on this, but I’m pretty sure it’s a decade or so old. The pins they are doing now are more elaborate and bigger than this Donald Duck pin.

Cereal toys used to be kind of interesting, or at least they held the promise of being something cool, which leads us to this balloon powered skateboard. Unless it was heavy and the balloon was really small, this collection of future landfill probably didn’t roll at all. More likely it just sort of turned over sideways and skipped across the the floor. They really went all out for these, 6 designs available in 4 colors. The seller is asking an insane $50 for this (cut up) 70’s era Cookie Crisp cereal box. Cookie Crisp was first introduced by Ralston Purina, so it must have been a salvo in the war to name cereals unlike anything remotely healthy. (See Super Sugar Crisp)

UPDATE: 3-19-26 – Added some pics of the actual cereal toys and a 1986 Cookie Crisp TV commercial with skateboarding in it

It’s Sugar Bear from Super Golden Crisp, originally called Super Sugar Crisp. Some time in the 80’s Post decided that a cereal with the word “sugar” in the name wasn’t a good idea. Sugar Crisp commercials would often include an brief environmental message on the storyline in the 70’s during the first wave of popular ecology awareness. All that before invariably giving someone a “super vitamin punch.” Maybe that’s why I was anemic as a child, not enough Super Sugar Crisp. This cereal box with a skateboard themed picture hunt game dates to 1992. For “extra fun” you can try timing the game. Whee!

– Thanks to BPA for the tip.

I believe I found this Chuck E. Cheese sticker already applied to the carpeting somewhere. I picked it up and stuck it to the back of something, and put it in my wallet where it hid for about 6 months.

This California Raisins button dates back to the very rad year of 1987. I’ve got those little PVC figures in the basement waiting to be photographed. What the heck is CALRAB? The California Raisin Advisory Board. They folded in 1994, and raisins have never been as cool since.